1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for maintaining reserved information of a system management basic input and output system (SMBIOS) in a computer system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for maintaining reserved information of an SMBIOS, that keeps the reserved SMBIOS information identical before and after updating the BIOS that comprises the SMBIOS in the computer system.
2. Description of Related Art
With advances in the fabrication of electronic components and computer systems a large variety of computer devices are becoming increasingly available to the public. Besides well known personal computers, portable electronic devices equipped with specific functionalities, such as MP3 players, digital cameras, portable phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc., are seen as a kind of computer systems.
In most computer systems, a basic input and output system (BIOS) is utilized to control input units and output units. The BIOS initializes input units and output units of a computer system for the user when the computer system boots. Hence, along with an increase in the amount and the enhancement of the functions of the input units and the output units of the computer system, the BIOS sometimes needs updating to ensure the BIOS has the ability to control these updated input units and output units of the computer system. Currently most computer systems store the BIOS in a re-writable non-volatile memory, such as a flash memory, for convenient updating.
The updating process includes erasing the original BIOS from the non-volatile memory, and then building a new BIOS in the non-volatile memory. That is, the previously stored BIOS (the original BIOS) is completely cleared off the non-volatile memory. However, sometimes, some previous BIOS information is preferably kept in the new BIOS. Some important part of the data of the System Management BIOS (SMBIOS) is one example.
The SMBIOS is stored in the BIOS and records computer system hardware configuration such as the version of the BIOS, the universal unique identifier (UUID) of the computer system, the manufacturer and the series number of the main board, specification of the central unit, the sizes of the main memory and the flash memory, and the usage status of the data transmission interface socket, for the management of the computer system.
As described above, the SMBIOS block is rebuilt and the data of the previous SMBIOS is lost when the BIOS is updated. Although the data of the SMBIOS is also rebuilt, the rebuilt data of the SMBIOS may possibly be different from the original data of the SMBIOS due to the variation of the hardware configuration of the computer system.
For some reason, some part of the reserved SMBIOS information is of more importance. It is preferable to retain this part of the reserved SMBIOS information when the BIOS is updated. For example, it is preferable to retain the factory settings of the SMBIOS information on public computers so that if any system hardware is stolen or maliciously changed it can be determined immediately. Accordingly, the reserved SMBIOS information is usually backed up in other non-volatile memory, such as the CMOS register within the chipset of the computer system in order to keep the previous reserved SMBIOS information from totally disappearing when the BIOS was updated.
However, due to the increasing complexity of hardware configurations of the computer system, the size of the reserved information needs to increase. Hence, it becomes increasingly more difficult to find enough space to backup the important reserved SMBIOS information in the computer system (the storage space of the CMOS register is limited).
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for an advanced mechanism to maintain the identity of the preserved SMBIOS information when the BIOS is updated.